While listening to a podcast at some point, I heard a outstanding Christian discuss his experience of coping with the death of his child. I had tuned into the podcast hoping to take heed to an honest discussion in regards to the problem of evil and suffering on this planet, as my very own experience of losing my mother brought this topic near home for me. So, when this man said that it was God’s will for his child to die and, in effect, that it was good, I recoiled. How could he say that the great and loving Lord wanted his child to die when death is an evil that God will at some point destroy? To my disappointment, the podcast host, an apologist, made no try and bring more nuance to the subject.
Too often, we hear theologians and pastors make sweeping claims in regards to the problem of pain on this planet. They emphasize God’s sovereignty to the acute of neglecting human free will and the truth of living in a sinful world. Or they depict the Lord as a powerless God who’s unable to interfere on behalf of injuring people. Teachings like these lead many believers to ask faith-shaking questions. Someone may ask: “I even have a chronic illness, and I pray for healing, but I’m still suffering. Does God not care? Is He not powerful enough to heal me?” Another person could raise a difficulty with death: “Did God want my loved one to die (from disease, in a automobile wreck, from a shooting, by being murdered, etc.)?”
When we take a look at the Bible, we don’t find neatly packed answers to our questions, despite what number of theologians and pastors decide to depict these issues. The issue of pain on this planet is complex. We must consider the broader teaching of Scripture when pondering of individual and widespread suffering.
And as we do, we’d like to carry loosely the manmade theological systems that we so easily cling to, submitting ourselves to the Bible.
Why Does Pain Exist in a World God Created to Be Good?
After a painful experience, individuals often shake their fists on the sky. Even Christians can grow offended. They know that God is answerable for all things and that He is all-powerful. Why would He allow such terrible suffering? As easy because it is in charge God, pain isn’t His fault. Neither is death, evil, and disease.
God created the universe and all the pieces in it, declaring it “superb” (Genesis 1:31, NIV). Animals and other people didn’t die. Floods didn’t devastate lands. There was no disease to cause long-term pain. He had made all the pieces good and walked with the primary humans, Adam and Eve, in perfect harmony.
But He had given a command – to not eat the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of excellent and evil (Genesis 2:17). This command was related to human free will. Adam and Eve could decide to love the Lord and follow Him or turn away from Him into revolt and pride. They selected the latter option. As a result, sin and death entered the world, marring the connection between Adam and Eve, in addition to their relationship with the Lord. They each died spiritually that day and would eventually die and return to the dust from which they were created (Genesis 3:19).
The poison of sin seeped into all the pieces. Where plants once flourished, now they’d be choked with thorns and thistles. Easy harvest was replaced with back-breaking labor (Genesis 3:17-18). Animals began devouring one another. Inequality would plague women, as they could be subjected to man and bear children in pain (Genesis 3:16). As a results of sin, all creation groans (Romans 8:22).
So, after we hear about catastrophic hurricanes or wildfires, children being trafficked for slavery, and other people dying from preventable diseases, we must always not so quickly raise a fist but take a more sober take a look at the world around us. None of this was a part of what God originally designed. Adam and Eve made a selection, which led to a sin-infected world crammed with evil and pain. That is the explanation individuals suffer from chronic illnesses. And yes, that’s the reason all people die. While God knows the variety of our days, He doesn’t cause our deaths (Job 14:5). We die because we’re little kids of Adam, and “in Adam all die” (1 Corinthians 15:22, NIV).
How Free Will Opens the Door to Sin and Suffering
Not only are we born with a sinful nature, but all of us decide to sin. Like Adam and Eve, each of us has free will, and though not all the time to the identical degree, we also all decide to go astray like our first parents (Romans 3:23). And the alternatives that every of us makes impact others.
Throughout the Bible, we examine the implications of individuals’s sins, which bring suffering to others. Cain selected to murder his brother Abel. Jacob knowingly deceived his brother and his father-in-law. David committed adultery and murder. Amnon raped his half-sister, Tamar. Judas betrayed the Son of God.
The Lord didn’t approve of any of those actions, but still, they happened. Individuals were exercising their free will by selecting to do evil, and pain resulted. We could argue that God could have stopped or forced them to do right. Yet that may mean He would must cast off their volition. We could not do fallacious, but we could also not freely decide to love and follow the Lord. He has given us free will, which individuals use to do evil.
We can say that God allows these items in His general will since He gave us the flexibility to decide on. But morally, evil isn’t inside God’s will. When people steal, kill, oppress, abuse, assault, and cause pain to others, they usually are not acting inside His holy and ideal will. He is holy and righteous, “and there is no such thing as a darkness in him in any respect” (1 John 1:5, NIV). So much pain on this planet happens due to sinful humankind.
God Entered Our Pain to Bring Redemption and Hope
When we experience painful events, we regularly assume the Lord is punishing us for our sins or attempting to strengthen an area of our faith. God definitely can use bad circumstances for our good (Romans 8:28; Genesis 50:20). However, we must always not assume pain occurs in our life because God is inflicting us or standing over us like a sergeant demanding we do higher. We live in a fallen world infected by sin. Sometimes, that’s the only reason we have now for our suffering.
Our Lord, though, cares about our pain. He didn’t sit back and watch the world decay, powerless to vary anything. After Adam and Eve sinned, He clothed them in animal skins, covering their sin and nakedness (Genesis 3:21). This act foreshadowed what the Lord later did by sending His Son into the world to save lots of us (John 3:16).
God the Son took on human flesh and lived on this sinful world. He knows what it’s prefer to mourn the lack of a loved one, to go hungry, and to experience pain. In love, He entered our suffering and bore our sins on the cross. The One who endured probably the most pain is the One who brought our healing (Isaiah 53:5; 1 Peter 2:24). He redeems us through His death and resurrection, bringing recent life to all who consider. And this redemption will at some point soon impact all creation when all things are made recent (Revelation 21:5).
In response to all of the suffering and evil on this planet, God gave us Himself. He could have stood far off and left us to our sinful fate. However, He selected to enter our world and tackle human flesh, dying in our place to supply forgiveness for sins. Whenever we’re reminded of the immense pain on this planet, we’d like to show our eyes to the cross. There, we discover a nail-scarred Savior who carried all of the world’s sins to bring hope and healing to all who consider. Pain is a reality, but so is the reality that our Lord cares and has overcome.
Finding Hope within the Mystery of God’s Ways
An aspect of the query of pain that a lot of us usually are not as comfortable grappling with is mystery. We desire systematic answers that specify exactly why events occur. But many situations in life usually are not so easily grasped, and neither are the ways of the Lord (Isaiah 55:8-9).
Perhaps that is complicated further due to predominance of prosperity teachings in America. For example, prosperity teachers advocate that following God brings blessings (in the shape of fabric goods and health), while disobedience brings punishment. Such logic defies Scriptural teaching and what we see on this planet. Why, then, will we hear about evil people prospering? Or why is it that some individuals live in comfort and ease while others suffer in poverty and oppression? The teachings that so often infiltrate our churches fail to contend with mystery.
What we are able to know is that the living Lord is sweet, loving, and just. We see evidence of His goodness and power in creation, as He showed Job (Job 38-41). Central to Job’s story is the issue of evil and suffering, yet nowhere within the book does the Lord provide a scientific answer to Job’s pain. His power and presence are the closest we come to a response since Job never learns of Satan’s involvement or why God allowed the pain.
Like Job, we also usually are not often shown why pain occurs in our lives or the world. But still, we have now evidence of God’s power and love around us. For amid the evil present on the earth, there are examples of His grace – the availability of rain, food, and the flexibility to experience joy (Acts 14:17). And the final word testimony to His goodness is the awesome mystery that He would send His Son to save lots of us.
In His loving character, we are able to find hope at the same time as we embrace the mystery of God’s ways and work.
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